Beauty Contestants Drive Mexico Men To Extreme Macho

MEXICO CITY — The Miss Universe pageant, the finals of which are to be televised globally Friday, has provided millions of Mexican men with plenty of opportunities to strut their machismo.

For nearly two weeks, contestants from 79 nations have been ferried around Mexico on goodwill visits. Wherever they appear, there are instant mobs of hooting, whistling and foot-stomping men to welcome them.

For example, when it was announced that the contestants would appear in the town of Zacatecas in bathing suits and high heels, the turnout resembled a crowd scene from a Hollywood movie spectacle. More than 20,000 people-mostly males-jostled each other to catch a glimpse of the contestants as they stepped off their buses.

Mexico City's normally nightmarish traffic grinds to a complete halt any time the contestants are taken anywhere. When they pose for the media against the backdrop of city landmarks, motorists stop their cars, honk their horns, howl and whistle, creating monumental traffic jams.

The contestants themselves smile blithely through it all, ever conscious of the fact that they're being judged in part on their ability to show grace under pressure.

The judging, which culminates with Friday's pageant, has been going on for days as the women accumulate points in various categories.

The pageant is a bane for women's rights advocates in Mexico. There are few feminists in Mexico, but they have vigorously protested this year's pageant, decrying it as "a vulgar meat market" and the contestants as "a bunch of Barbie doll bimbos."

The pageant's organizers, in turn, emphasize that the contestants are judged on an array of personal attributes, not just physical beauty.

But those voices are scarcely heard above the din of media attention in this inveterately macho country being given to vital measurements, hair and eye color, leg length and other strictly physical attributes.

Even the respected newspaper Excelsior hasn't been immune to a certain amount of macho overkill. One senior writer noted Monday with pique, "Annoyingly, not all of the contestants appear to be at the absolute peak of physical pulchritude. Why, some do not even know how to carry their swimming robes. Instead of holding their robes coyly to one side, some of the girls clutch them up close, thereby concealing some of the more interesting aspects of their physiognomy."